Swimming in the Volcano

by Bob Shacochis

  Selwyn had recruited Ibrahim himself because he was impressed by the zodiac of scar tissue on the boy, that’s what he had said—where you get dem nastiness, bwoy—the two crescent moons on the youth’s right arm, the stars on his right leg, the diamond above one eye where Sergeant Marcus had kissed him with a piece of coral stone. Selwyn had saved Ibrahim from limbo and brought him to Queenstown to serve in the Special Action section with another guy who hadn’t been around lately. He was sick, Ibrahim speculated. Or he was on secret duty; maybe he went to the country to visit his mother. Maybe he was dead—Ibrahim wasn’t going to stick his nose in it.

  Walker came over to where the corporal sat at the desk. Ibrahim gauged the intensity in the lieutenant commander’s eyes and made himself ready for it head-on. Selwyn had that look that meant an operation was coming. His uniform smelled like flags. Ibrahim always felt in the presence of strong forces when they were together. There was heat simmering out of Selwyn Walker, deep inside. That was a thing they had in common. Another thing was, they were both clean, which was important. Ibrahim held a powerful aversion to uncleanliness—he had been made to spend the greater portion of his existence bathed in filth, and it made his skin crawl, and fireflies blink in and out of his vision, to remember those times.

  He sprang to his feet. A silver rain of staples fell to the floor. The salute, the end of nonsense. Walker let him remain at attention, but that was correct, he had been born and raised with a curriculum of discipline. He could contain himself, if you showed him a good system, like Walker’s. He wanted Ibrahim to be an immaterial being. Tell lies about wrong-thinkers, stay in the shadows, create the fear.

  You can do that?

  But shit, Selwyn Walker knew he could do that, or else why else recruit him when Walker found him there like a pet monkey, invisibly chained to the stoop of the police station on Cotton Island, during those first days when the coalition took control from Pepper. He understood perfectly how to lime and lie low and don’t talk. Walker had gazed down at him, curled in the shade but alert, and he saw that the youth fit his operation.

  “What wildness you been up to, bwoy?” That was what Selwyn Walker had said, the first words. “Where you get dem nasty scar?”

  He didn’t tell Selwyn Walker anything, but the lieutenant commander got the picture, he comprehended everything about him, straight off. He had to say nothing—it just happen. Selwyn Walker had made him stand up and turn a circle. Then he went into the station and spoke with Sergeant Marcus; when he came back out, he looked at Collymore as if he had done something wrong, and he said that he should come with him, back to St. Catherine.

  He had looked down at his bare feet, self-mortified, and had begun to tremble. You carryin me to prison, sahf

  Selwyn Walker looked inquisitive and wanted to know why he would ask such a thing, if Cassius felt that prison was where he rightfully belonged. Cassius had no idea what Sergeant Marcus might have told Selwyn Walker—the man knew some things, after six years of jooking his backside, and playing cover-up, stashing money—but he saw that the lieutenant commander was not a fellow he could hope to deceive, not for long, and there’d be hell to pay for trying. He bowed his head, not in shame but to prevent himself from telling all.

  “Yes ... sah.”

  “Yes?” Selwyn Walker repeated, amazed. “You say, yes!” He relaxed himself with laughter, shaking his head in disbelief. “You sometin, bwoy.”

  Yes. Because there was a restlessness inside of him that no one could see, and was without cure. Yes, because he had mean thoughts. After his father had disappeared at sea, between the time Sergeant Marcus had come to claim him and the situation with the Albritton girl, he would walk all day the way across the island to the villages on the windward side, exploring Cotton as he hadn’t since he was a child in another home, with another identity. He would walk all the way across just to drink a grape Ju-C in a shop and then turn around for the walk back, reaching Collymore’s shanty at dusk, tired and wanting sleep, so that he would not care so much when Sergeant stopped by. There were months he had spent on the periphery of the construction site for the new airport, staring dully at the machinery and the clouds of dust, and endless hours that would find him on the town wharf, getting in the way of the stevedores, staring cat-faced at the sailing yachts, thinking, This is my boat. That white woman is my woman. Them men does work for me. Then he would drag the heavy mindless restlessness of his adolescence back to Collymore’s shanty, and Sergeant Marcus would come with his lesson books, and his sport magazines, maybe a piece of sweet cake or can of soup, and a jar of Vaseline to rub on his bum. He became a thief, because Sergeant never gave him enough money. Sergeant had a business with ganja, and Cassius became part of that too—a delivery boy, although he didn’t smoke it himself because it brought on hallucinations and panic. There were other things, deals and messages and threats that took him from one end of the island to the other, always walking, walking out the sick energy and the rage, the terrible desires, feelings so ugly and burning that he found them intolerable, until one day, crossing through the bush, the sun so hot it cooked the silence into a boil, and the ravens overhead hissed at the infertile land where even the insects were drunk with heat, he met the Albritton girl, a stupid ugly girl in a torn and dirty dress that was too large for her and wouldn’t stay on her shoulders but kept dropping below the swollen pointy nipples that were her new bubbies. She sat on a rock, her feet in the dirt and her legs wide apart, scratching her name in the hard white dirt with a stick. He heard bells in the bush and noticed the scrawny goats she was there to tend. Behind her was a higher rock, and he climbed up on it to look around at all the thorny, rock-strewn, waterless and inhuman solitude of the interior of the atoll.

  What you see, bwoy? the girl had asked.

  You.

  Even in the emptiness and cruel quiet you could always count on people being around nearby, somewhere, even if you couldn’t see or hear them. When the girl made too much fuss, he stuffed her mouth with her own grimy, stink-pot pair of panties, and when she kept acting up, even though he told her over and over, No, no, listen, me like you, hush, he took the stick that she had used to draw in the dirt and, prying it between her teeth, pushed the panties far back in her mouth to quiet her down, and she quieted down. He remembered that, he would always remember that—the calmness that passed into her, like sweetness. Then he went and stayed by the police station, because he was afraid, and that was the end of the part of the restlessness that walked him all over the island, like a duppy who can’t seem to locate his own grave. After that, he behaved better; he knew not to stray too far from his own yard and master.

  Then Selwyn Walker came and said he had a proposition for him, and took him on the boat where he was sick, and Walker thought it was his first time at sea, but when they reached St. Catherine and stepped ashore on the quay he felt like he had been set free from a movie he had somehow gotten trapped in, a captivity that was infinitely more mysterious than it was unjust. And Selwyn Walker never asked him to confess.

  “In my office,” Selwyn Walker said, and Ibrahim followed him in. “Close the door,” said Walker, and he did. “Sit down,” and Ibrahim did as he was told, and Walker informed him that this was a situation of the highest gravity. Ibrahim knew exactly what the lieutenant commander meant when he said gravity: objects, people, dreams, everything, falling into place. Gravity was like the law—it wouldn’t let you escape, not for long, unless it wanted you to escape, like going underwater.

  Selwyn Walker hesitated, seemingly distracted, and Ibrahim knew that look from the years on the reef spent with Collymore, when Collymore was trying to get his bearings, looking for a hole or a cut or a passage. Walker studied the wall behind Ibrahim’s head, full of more certificates, commendations, such things as big shots collect—On Her Majesty’s Service: We thank you for your years of subservience, et cetera. Walker’s joke. Then his attention returned to his desk and he fingered through a pile of papers, pulling one out from ne
ar the top. Ibrahim recognized the format, glossy and smeared: dem cable business, meaning, important message, pay attention. Selwyn extracted a second sheet from the pile and pushed it across the desk for Ibrahim to see. A copy of a picture of a woman was printed on it, hard to make out—just a woman, white; or maybe a man with long hair—and then typing below that: name, age, date of birth, place of birth, 110 pounds, brown hair, hazel eyes and such, scar on knee. Then the story: drugs ... in connection with ... His eyes slid off the page.

  “You recognize she?”

  “No.”

  Walker pushed the other sheet forward. “Him?”

  Roberto Antonio Fernandez. Age, date of birth, place of birth: Cienfuegos, Cuba ... U.S. Marine Corps, 1968-70. Discharged honorably: 9/1/70. Wanted for importation of narcotics into the United States of America; wanted for questioning in the death of Katherine Byrd Mason, 3/3/77, in Honolulu, Hawaii. Indicted 3/13/77; warrant for arrest issued, Pacific District Federal Court. Whereabouts unknown, believed to be in Thailand, Mexico, Latin America.

  “No.”

  Walker rapped the first cable with his knuckles and sat back. “People in Miami very curious about this girl, eh?”

  Ibrahim scanned the cable concerning the woman again: Whereabouts unknown, believed to be in Thailand, Mexico, Latin America. But at the bottom of the page he read an update: Attn: St. Catherine National Police: Please confirm arrival of suspect at Brandon Vale International Airport, 3/30/77. Notify—“If them boojies want she,” Selwyn said, “why they drag feet and let she pass through? Them always have reasons, you know.”

  “Something goin on?” ventured Ibrahim.

  “Something goin on always, is what I know.”

  “True, true. Me see it.”

  “Funny business starting up on this island, bwoy. Airport catch afire, Kingsley stirrin up the coalition, disrespect, nuh? interference, all manner of nastyism up north, opportunism, reactionary thought, hostile moves against the masses, and uneasiness.” To punctuate his message, Selwyn sucked his teeth, looking disgusted. “If we have something them Miami big shots want, I must know, eh? And if the woman come this way, I want to know why. What we got here that interest she, nuh? She have negative reasons, eh?”

  Ibrahim automatically agreed. Walker picked up the phone and began to dial, his way of dismissing a subordinate he had called into his office. Selwyn Walker was very cheap with instructions to the corporal. He depended on him to use his imagination. Iman Ibrahim stood and backed out the door, saluting. He knew without being told what information the lieutenant commander wanted him to provide. The who-see-who. Connections. In a place like St. Catherine, it was a simple job, because everybody was connected to everybody else, either by blood, money, or misfortune. Except someone like him, Iman, who was a fellow born motherless in hell and brought to earth by burning angels to occupy a place where connections broke, and then began again on the other side of him, transformed.

  He went for his lunch.

  Selwyn Walker spoke to his secretary, requesting his car and driver to be stationed out front, to take him to his own lunch with the foreign minister and the minister of information—a last briefing of Archibol before the man put himself back where he was most useful, in New York, fund-raising and hell-raising. The United Nations was a place you could get things done, these days. President Carter had appointed a black man from Atlanta to the U.N. seat; also, these men were conducting formal negotiations with Havana for the first time since 1961. People were listening, you could assert yourself, your cause. Human rights were on the agenda; whatever that meant, it raised possibilities. Lists were made, lists were unmade.

  He would supply Archibol with plenty of evidence: evidence was a foregone conclusion, a wild crop that only need be selectively harvested, then pruned and shaped. Really it was only a matter of using the talent at hand, like a school play. Students would rise to the occasion, given the necessary direction. The boy Cassius Collymore, for instance. He had simply brought him to St. Catherine to be a shadow, to menace and prowl, to be a haunting reminder of Walker’s own power, and now his Cotton Island foundling had remade himself into the spirit of the times, a mascot for all the change that was coming—Iman Ibrahim, revolution’s smoke. And now Selwyn Walker had accidentally acquired another, though less gifted actor, being readied for service.

  This was a very interesting game of dominoes—that was another way to see it. He had been curious about Crissy Knowles’ son, had meant him no harm, but had been forced to throw him into jail for being rude, for being a smartmouth, to teach him manners. This was the correct way to proceed. Then he began to think, Why was the boy so quick to be rude, unless he had an axe to grind? He asked one of his men to provide a memo on the Knowles boy, his family and friends, his activities. The results were very interesting. Kingsley’s name came up in an unexpected way. Also, the name of an American attached to Kingsley’s ministry. And now this girl, Johanna Fernandez, whom Walker already had learned was somehow associated with Kingsley’s American.

  It boiled down to scurrility, one way or the next. It was a process, this business, not a policy. Two plus two plus two plus two. What it all meant, he didn’t know, but they trusted him to figure it out—all the more because the process was mental, an exchange of intuition and vibrations, and he had to puzzle it out himself from the evidence.

  They lunched on steak and chips, upstairs in the old Seaman’s Union Hall on the waterfront down toward Scuffletown. Selwyn Walker probed Archibol about Crissy Knowles’ boy.

  Crissy was a patriot, said Archibol, but his friends betray him—just like his friends betrayin us. Crissy’s boys were good boys, he believed. His wife had been involved recently in a minor traffic accident with the eldest. Archibol had spoken to him, discussed the way things were with the boy, and had the impression that the boy was a sympathizer and might be willing to help. Crissy Knowles’ boy could be an advantage, a reminder of how Kingsley had played coward and fucked up the country, put all them peasants out of work. Someone from the party should contact the boy.

  Were Kingsley and his clique still supporting the family, Walker asked? Archibol said he didn’t know. Lloyd Peters listened intently, wondering where all this talk about a damn boy was leading.

  They talked about the businessmen on the island, most of whom favored Kingsley. They talked about tourist revenues, money that did not spread through society, but funneled back into the same old pockets. They talked about the difficulty in reforming an agricultural economy based on exports, and they talked about the indifference of the United States of America, and then, without feeling they were contradicting themselves, they talked about sabotage. Just because an enemy was aloof made him no less your enemy.

  “Here now, Selwyn, just what is it you surmise taking place up north?” Archibol asked, looking less troubled than imperious.

  “Counterrevolutionaries.”

  “You jump ahead of yourself on that one, Selwyn,” remarked Lloyd Peters, amused. “We ain’t as yet have a revo for anyone to counter.”

  “No?” said Selwyn, mockingly. “No?” he taunted, and, smiling at their laughter, told them he was preparing a case. He was gathering evidence. The evidence would show that the Americans were conducting a covert operation on the island, financing pro-Kingsley reactionaries with illegal funds laundered from drug sales.

  “Fuck me in the ass, bwoy!” said Lloyd Peters. He was duly impressed. Selwyn had a busy imagination. He was a pioneer, a fucking pioneer.

  As the working day ended, Ibrahim returned to headquarters to make his report. He had been to Immigration: the woman had arrived on St. Catherine two days ago. On her immigration form she had written Mitchell Wilson, c/o Min. of Agriculture, as her place of residence. Selwyn Walker listened stony-faced for details that he didn’t already have from his tiring discussions with Crissy Knowles’ boy.

  Still, this was how a hunter trained his dogs to hunt, introduce them to the scent of the quarry, wipe their muzzles with it, and then
unleash them, but not until you’d pictured in your mind the chase and its possible routes, foreseen the outcome and the alternatives to the outcome, so that at the end you’d be there, waiting, to know if your instincts were correct, your art impeachable, and you could step forward, finally, in control.

  He was working it out, trying to fathom the design: Here was a truth that proved itself daily—when you were right-thinking and positive and poised for change, then history grew translucent, you could see your face in its reflection, the design spiraled with a life of its own toward convergence, and every passing moment favored you with something new. Corporal Ibrahim had nothing for him, but he had something for Corporal Ibrahim. Minutes ago he had taken a phone call from one of his recruits at the airport, someone in Customs, the same recruit whom he had called for investigation regarding the overseas cable yesterday, when it had been received by Communications. The message this afternoon was that the woman and two others had just taken a charter down to Cotton. Very interesting: why was she not with her man?

  Selwyn Walker had not satisfied himself as to Iman Ibrahim’s potential, and there was no better time to do it. He had not yet tapped the corporal’s sanguine moods, not truly encouraged whatever dark knowledge lay beneath the youth’s scars, behind the chilling, roaming psychopathy of the eyes, had not quite utilized the coiled tension of his posture, so that he might better understand how to manage and enjoy Ibrahim’s special gift, to find for it a role that was not yet fully apparent, for he would not have it wasted, as the boy’s guardian on Cotton Island had wasted it, spent on frivolous craving.